This is something thats always stayed with me after seeing it as a kid on TV, its a quote from "The World at War" BBC series with Sir Laurence Olivier providing the comentary:


Down this road on a summer day in 1944, the soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, the community, which had lived for a thousand years, was dead. This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road, and they were driven into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then they were killed too.

A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead, in battle.

They never rebuilt Oradour.

Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousands upon thousands of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, China, in a World at War...